Instrumentation: voice and piano

Libretto by: Gregg Kallor

Duration: ~3 minutes

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Scene context

Victor has nearly completed building a companion for the Creature, and he contemplates the consequences of his task (“The world was a secret”). Victor is torn between his obligation to provide some measure of happiness for the Creature and his fear of the increased destruction that the pair of creatures might jointly inflict on humanity.

Character description

Blinded by ambition and obsessed with achieving his goal, Victor Frankenstein’s secret and reckless pursuit of the creation of life with no regard for consequences wrought suffering upon the Creature he built and tragedy upon the Frankenstein family. The death of Victor’s mother inspired his quest to create a being that would be impervious to disease; and yet he abandoned the very life he created because the Creature’s physical appearance repulsed and frightened him. After hearing the Creature describe the misery of his existence, Victor begins to glimpse the world from the Creature’s perspective. Tormented by his complicity in the Creature’s anguish, Victor faces an awful choice between helping the Creature and protecting his fellow humans; a choice brought about by his own actions.

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